In a video posted to her Twitter account, Lake said that the “2022 general election in Arizona was botched and broken beyond repair,” continuing claims that voters who went in person on Election Day were “disenfranchised” by broken machines and long lines.
“This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats,” Lake said in the video. “This is about our sacred right to vote, a right that many voters were sadly deprived of on November 8.”
Lake also claimed that half of Arizona’s voting centers open on Election Day “were not operational or had significant failures,” adding that an “overwhelming majority of voters” who went in person “were voting for Kari Lake.”
The candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump has also denied the results of the 2020 presidential election and has yet to concede to Democrat and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who’s set to take over as governor in January. Instead, Lake has continued to push unbacked claims of voter fraud in the state, and has specifically criticized the state’s largest county, Maricopa.
Among Lake’s allegations are that voting issues in Maricopa County, including issues with the tabulation machines, disenfranchised same-day voters at several locations. Maricopa election officials were also some of the last to post results in the week following the midterms, which Lake has used to inflate her election-fraud claims.
According to a tweet from the Maricopa County Election Board on Monday, the final ballot count in Arizona shows that over 1.56 million voters cast their ballots in the county this year, a turnout of 64.17 percent. The figure surpasses the county’s average over the last five years, reported the board, and is nearly one point behind the record-setting 2018 election, which saw a turnout of 65.5 percent.
Sophia Solis, deputy communications director for Arizona’s Secretary of State office, told Newsweek that Lake’s claims “are nothing more than attempts to undermine the will of the voters and sow distrust in our election processes.”
Lake’s campaign team has also reportedly threatened Maricopa officials, according to the county’s attorney Todd Liddy, who, as Newsweek reported, accused a Republican National Committee (RNC) lawyer working on Lake’s campaign of threatening him in a phone call. A clip of the call was also posted by the Twitter account Kari Lake War Room, which shows Liddy raising his voice during the conversation.
An RNC spokesperson previously told Newsweek that the clip of Liddy shows that “Maricopa County election officials are completely inept,” adding that the county “should have been preparing for this midterm election for two years, yet they comprehensively failed before, during and after Election Day.”
Update 11/22/22, 4:29 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional comment from Hobbs’ office.
